30 October 2011 8:47 PM

Surgery is not a cure for overeating

The alternative to gastric band surgery is to eat less and sort out your head rather than your stomach.

Karl Turner, the MP for Hull East, is angry that his obese constituents are being denied gastric band surgery - costing £8,000 a twang - because of NHS spending cuts.

He had one himself and lost twelve and a half stone as a result. Diets hadfailed. His doctors had prescribed amphetamines but they hadn't helped.

Only surgery that reduced the size of his stomach saved him - and thereforethe NHS - from the long-term costs of GP visits, medicines and hospital treatment for diabetes, heart problems, asthma and skin conditions.

He claims that advising people to eat fewer burgers does not understand that poor people buy high calorie foods because these are all that they can afford.

I do not know Mr Turner but it would appear that he might be a compulsive overeater - someone who binges on foods containing sugar and white flour and that this then sets up cravings to binge on anything. How else would he have become so grossly overweight?

Urges to change the way people feel will not be altered by surgery. Compulsive overeaters like me will find other ways to satisfy our cravings.

Most commonly we cross-addict into shopping and spending, work and exercise.These can be just as destructive as any other addiction.

Surgery can't help any of these desperate and destructive behaviours - or any other problem that stems from disturbance of mood.

As with alcoholism and drug addiction and other compulsions, eating disorders require a chronic, rather than an acute, solution.

But do these specialists really know what they are doing in this particularclinical field?

This morning, in an NHS hospital, I picked up a copy of its Trust News, in which a whole page was proudly given to bariatric - weight loss - surgery.

There is no doubt that this is big business for the hospital, which is a 'preferred provider' of this specialist service in the local area.

In the boardroom of that same hospital, seventy members of OvereatersAnonymous - at no cost whatever - met to share their experience of a dailyreprieve from their cravings.

Some had previously been offered gastric bands or bariatric surgery but nowno longer needed that approach.

More importantly, they were positive in their attitude to life and they were no longer slaves to the scales.

I wonder whether the surgeons, psychologists, dieticians, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all have ever witnessed the successful non-medical treatment takingplace in their very own NHS flagship hospital.

Maybe they will be reluctant to find out. After all, it would be like turkeys voting in favour of Christmas: their whole department might be closed. But that would save the NHS a fortune. It would also be safer andkinder for the patients.

Over the years, I have treated - without drugs or surgery - over fifteen hundred in-patients with eating disorders. I still do so at my addictions treatment centre in London. After treatment I refer them on to Overeaters Anonymous.

In the private sector, I was - and still am -dependent primarily upon one patient referring another. The proof of positive results was in our outcome studies.

At the very least, it would be sensible for NHS eating disorder patients toattend OA while they are on the waiting list for surgery. Some of them - perhaps all of them - may never need it.

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DR ROBERT LEFEVER

Dr Robert Lefever established the very first addiction treatment centre in the UK that offered rehabilitation to eating disorder patients, as well as to those with alcohol or drug problems. He was also the first to treat compulsive gambling, nicotine addiction and workaholism.
He identified 'Compulsive Helping', when people do too much for others and too little for themselves, as an addictive behaviour and he pioneered its treatment.
He has worked with over 5,000 addicts and their families in the last 25 years and, until recently, ran a busy private medical practice in South Kensington.
He has written twenty six books on various aspects of depressive illness and addictive behaviour.
He now provides intensive private one-to-one care for individuals and their families.

He has written twenty six books on various aspects of depressive illness and addictive behaviour.

He now uses his considerable experience to provide intensive private one-to-one care for individuals and their families.